Tropical Vegetables That Stand Up To Heat West Indian Crops Thrive On Summer

July 13, 1985|By Thomas MacCubbin, Special to The Sentinel

Keep the summer garden productive with vegetables that can beat the heat -- crops from the neighboring tropics that flourish when the weather turns hot and humid. These often exotic-looking, big-leaved and vining plants produce abundant yields and promise new culinary delights.

Tropical vegetables have been introduced to many gardeners by residents with West Indian ancestry. These were the vegetables Anthony Thomas remembers his grandfather cultivating on the island of Grenada. As a boy, Thomas helped till the fields but didn't have a keen interest in gardening. After moving to London, England, to work as a carpenter's apprentice, ''I just needed something extra to do and began a garden,'' he said.

Gardening soon grew into a hobby, and Thomas planted the familiar cucumbers, squash and beans of London gardens. The season was just too short and cool for the heat-seeking tropicals, he said. It wasn't until he moved to Orlando to establish his carpentry business and a garden that he could again cultivate vegetables from the West Indies.

The tropical crops are easy to grow, Thomas said. Gardening with his wife Albertha, he has expanded his hobby to what most would consider a backyard farm. ''I love to grow vegetables in the good earth,'' he said. Sometimes he spends more than three hours a day planting, cultivating and just watching the crops grow.

Sandy Florida soils are certainly different from the rich loams of both Grenada and London, Thomas said. Soil preparation is important in order to get good yields from the tropical vegetables. Each spring, Thomas incorporates homemade compost, bags of topsoil and manure plus a granular 6-6-6 fertilizer into the planting site. When the soil is enriched at the beginning of the season, no additional fertilizer is needed, Thomas said.

Planting can begin as soon as all ingredients for the good soil have been thoroughly turned into the garden. Thomas likes to plant in trenches. Make the trench about 6 inches deep, he said. This will hold moisture around the new plants, reducing the frequency of irrigation. He said that a deep trench also gives new plants added protection from the wind. Thomas said he likes to pull soil in around the crops and gradually fills the trench during the growing season. Adding the soil reinforces the plants, he said.

The beginnings for a tropical garden can be obtained from many Spanish markets. Albertha Thomas prepares all the fresh-from-the-garden produce for home use so that when it's time to replant, she picks up tubers or root portions of below-ground crops from the market. Seeds for many crops are salvaged from vegetables consumed throughout the year. The seeds are first air-dried, then stored in a sealed container until the next planting season.

Some tropical vegetables run rampant in the garden before producing a harvest. The heart leaf vining yam climbs rapidly up an arbor, fence or and size are impressive and fit it for noble uses.

harvest. The heart leaf vining yam climbs rapidly up an arbor, fence or even a nearby tree. Wild yams are a familiar site in Central Florida, but only the garden varieties are edible. They grow tubers that average from 3 to 8 pounds. Sometimes a tuber of up to 60 pounds is produced. One that Thomas describes as several feet long and equally wide grew right in his own back yard. Harvesting that yam was a scary gardening experience, he said.

Thomas has trained one yam up a rather leafless tree. It's growing in an old compost pile, he said. Yams like the loose rich soil and by early summer will begin to form the underground tubers.

Yams are a 10- to 11-month crop; Thomas will have to wait until December for this season's harvest. He begins in March, planting portions of the large tubers spaced about 3 feet apart in the garden. Then all they need is a place to climb to produce a new crop ready to peel, boil and enjoy.

Another vining crop for the garden is the boniato, commonly called the Cuban sweet potato. This is a relative of the common garden sweet potato, but more rounded and red-skinned. The crop is propagated from a cut-up potato or whole potato grown in a sandy soil to produce young plants called slips. Cuttings can also be made from the vigorous vines by removing 8 to 10 inches of tip growth.

Space the boniatos, either plants or cut potato pieces, 12 inches apart in rows or just spot the plantings throughout the garden. It takes about 150 days before gardeners can dig down under the vines for the plump new potatoes.

A very tropical-looking tanier grows big ''elephant ear''-like leaves in the Thomas garden. Also known as cocoyam, yautia and malanga, the plant grows to more than 5 feet high, sending up many leaf blades from the base. Start this crop early from tubers, because production takes 9 to 10 months. Give it rich, moist soil for the best yields. Serve the tubers baked, mashed or fried just like potatoes. A similar crop, the dasheen, is also found in tropical gardens.